Fantastic Planet

Nothing else has ever looked or felt like director René Laloux’s animated marvel Fantastic Planet, a politically minded and visually inventive work of science fiction. The film is set on a distant planet called Ygam, where enslaved humans (Oms) are the playthings of giant blue native inhabitants (Draags). After Terr, kept as a pet since infancy, escapes from his gigantic child captor, he is swept up by a band of radical fellow Oms who are resisting the Draags’ oppression and violence. With its eerie, coolly surreal cutout animation by Roland Topor; brilliant psychedelic jazz score by Alain Goraguer; and wondrous creatures and landscapes, this Cannes-awarded 1973 counterculture classic is a perennially compelling statement against conformity and violence.

Animated in Czechoslovakia amid a Soviet invasion, the French film Fantastic Planet, the third collaboration between René Laloux and Roland Topor, timelessly renders its surreal sci-fi story of captivity and resistance.

In anticipation of the Twin Peaks revival set to debut on Showtime in May, GQ spends time with the infamously elusive David Lynch and compiles some awestruck testimonials from his frequent collaborators, including Laura Dern, Kyle MacLachlan, and Mar…